New York City is planning on almost two-thirds of Bronx
students failing to graduate high school, says a new report that has
outraged elected officials, non-profit advocacy groups and a raucous
crowd of more than 400 concerned parents and student activists at a
rally in North Fordham two Saturdays ago.

The disconcerting number stems from the city’s school seat
projections in the Department of Education’s (DOE) Five-Year Capital
Plan, which predicts that only 36 percent of Bronx students entering
ninth grade will graduate high school in four years. The projections
determine how many, and where, new school seats and buildings will
be created by the School Construction Authority (SCA).

DOE spokesperson Marge Feinberg doesn’t deny the number, but says
it’s not that simple. Many students take longer than four years to
graduate and projections also take birth rate, immigration and other
demographic changes into account. Besides, percentage-wise, the
Bronx will receive more new seats from the capital plan than any
other borough in the city, Feinberg says.

Feinberg maintains that the current plan, once completed, will
eliminate overcrowding in Bronx schools.

Many blame high dropout and low attendance rates in the Bronx on
overcrowding. Parents, students, politicians and school advocates
from across the city are skeptical that a plan to cut seats based on
pessimistic survival projections will resolve an issue that has
plagued the borough for more than 30 years.

Report challenges cityThe public outcry in the Bronx began on Nov. 6 when the DOE
announced 1,500 middle and elementary school seats would be slashed
from the original plan, created in 2004, to build 4,000 new seats in
District 10 (the entire northwest Bronx). It was one of the biggest
cuts of seats in the city. The DOE said the cuts were due to
demographic changes.

Three days earlier, representatives from the Northwest Bronx
Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) sat down with Deputy
Chancellor for Finance Kathleen Grimm and SCA President Sharon
Greenberger. NWBCCC President Ronn Jordan asked them to find a new
permanent home for the Leadership Institute, a small second-year
high school that NWBCCC helped create, and to site 1,000 new high
school seats at the Kingsbridge Armory (the SCA is already set to
build 1,000 elementary and middle school seats there). They rejected
the requests, saying the current capital plan would add enough seats
to cure overcrowding. According to Jordan, they said, “If you don’t
believe us, prove us wrong.”

The NWBCCC did just that, asking the Annenberg Institute for School
Reform, a non-profit research group based in Manhattan, to provide
them with a statistical analysis of the DOE’s plan. In turn, the
Institute produced a report called “Planning for Failure?” which
argued that the DOE is “caught between cross purposes, to the
detriment of Bronx students.”

There is an inherent conflict in trying to fund an accurate amount
of new seats (using a survival rate of 36 percent), while improving
the graduation rate to 80 percent by 2010, the report says. The
report also says that it is the difference between “high school
graduation, college and successful careers, or the school-to-prison
pipeline or dead-end jobs in the low-wage service economy for more
than 10,000 youth [the number of Bronx students the report predicts
will not have seats if they stay on course to graduate].”

Longtime schools advocate Noreen Connell, head of the Educational
Priorities Panel, said the school seat projection methodology is
used throughout the country, but that doesn’t make it right or
accurate. Not only does it plan for students to fail, she said, but
it also doesn’t accurately count the capacity of schools or the
effect new small schools have had on diminishing a school’s
capacity.

If Connell had her way, she says she would add 20,000 high school
seats to the capital plan. “There’s no excuse for cuts on the high
school level.”

Game of ‘Survivor’
Leonie Haimson, who heads the non-profit Class Size Matters, says
the axing of seats in District 10 is not only “unconscionable,” but
that the Bloomberg administration isn’t putting its money where its
mouth is.

“For all his emphasis on education, Mayor Bloomberg will leave the
city with larger class sizes than when he arrived,” Haimson said.
“This capital plan proves again that education comes last.”

At the rally two Saturdays ago, coordinated by the NWBCCC (as part
of its annual meeting), community leaders expressed outrage over the
cuts and the 36 percent figure.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum showed up to voice her displeasure.
“I’m thrilled to sign onto this project,” Gotbaum said. “Clinton
[High School, 142 percent capacity] is a wonderful school, but what
has happened there is a disgrace.”

Local activist Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter told the crowd that her
daughter, who attends John F. Kennedy High School (127 percent
capacity), can’t find a place to sit and eat her lunch because the
cafeteria is too crowded. “The administration is telling us that
your children are not worth our time,” she said.

Jose Cabrera, a senior at one of the small schools on the Walton
High School campus (167 percent capacity), equated high school in
the Bronx to a game of “Survivor.” “Imagine if you had three kids,
but the DOE told you only one of them would succeed,” Cabrera said.

In a speech, Joel Rivera, the City Council majority leader, referred
to a new prison being proposed for Hunts Point, and asked City Hall:
“Why do you want to build a jail and not new schools?”

Jordan said it’s not an accident that “two-thirds of [New York
State’s] prisoners don’t have a high school diploma.”

Cabrera says the crowding breeds frustration. He said students grow
frustrated; from the lack of attention, from the long lines to get
through metal detectors, from exasperated and overworked teachers
and administrators. “Students feel like everything is stacked
against them and it’s too hard to pass,” he said. “It’s all
psychological.”

Ed. note: The NWBCCC is calling on all those displeased with
the capital plan to voice their concerns at a DOE Panel for
Education Policy Meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 18 at I.S. 184,
778 Forrest Ave.